That was a damn good book! Picked because I started reading October by the same author something like more than a year ago and am still stuck due to the too many names I have to remember while at the same time reading a lot of good comments about him.

The city & the city is good. It is basically a noir whodunnit set in a frontier city in the Balkans. With a twist. About the city(ies). And the main point is here.

The first few chapters felt disturbing in that the main characters kept using words that made just no sense but there was no context or explanation at first. It’s just his everyday life and habits. But the whole setup phase felt off. But in the end, I am happy with this whole setup. Partially because the whole glitch that makes de whole environment possible is not explained at all. In the sense that even in the story no one knows what makes the city(ies) the way they are. So by being lost, we are pretty much in the same situation as the different protagonists.

The whole scenarios, setups and power dynamics are very gripping and once I got used to the whole setup I mentioned above, I just couldn’t let go of the book.

Final word

5/5 would harass people into reading it.